Payward, the parent company of Kraken, plans to offer US clients onchain perpetual futures through markets deployed on the Hyperliquid protocol, a setup that would make it the first registered US exchange to run such products onchain.
The plan, reported by CoinDesk on Wednesday, leans on Payward’s $550 million acquisition of Bitnomial, a Chicago-based derivatives exchange with US regulatory registrations. By routing Hyperliquid markets through a registered exchange structure, Payward is attempting to give American traders the product they currently access only through offshore venues, with the compliance wrapper the offshore platforms lack.
Why the structure matters
Perpetual futures are the most traded crypto product in the world by volume, but US retail investors have never had direct regulated access to them. American traders who want perps use platforms like Hyperliquid, Binance or Bybit, often through VPNs or offshore entities, outside the reach of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC has spent two years signaling that it wants this activity onshore, and the demand is measurable: offshore perps venues clear more daily volume than every regulated US crypto derivatives product combined.
Payward’s approach is to bring the market to the regulator rather than the regulator to the market. Bitnomial holds a Designated Contract Market registration, which permits it to list products for retail traders. Deploying markets on Hyperliquid’s protocol means the matching and settlement happen onchain, while the legal wrapper, customer onboarding and compliance sit with a US-registered entity. Whether that combination satisfies the CFTC’s requirements for market integrity, surveillance and customer protection is the question the agency will have to answer, and Payward is betting the answer is yes.
Payward aims to become the first registered US exchange to deploy markets on the Hyperliquid protocol, CoinDesk reported.
What Hyperliquid gets out of it
For Hyperliquid, the deal is validation of a different kind. The protocol has grown into the largest decentralized perps venue by volume largely through offshore flow, and its US accessibility has always been a gray zone. A registered US exchange running markets on its infrastructure gives Hyperliquid a compliance story it could never build alone, and it puts the protocol’s technology in front of institutional traders who cannot touch offshore venues.
It also deepens the competition between Hyperliquid and the traditional exchange stack. CME has been expanding its crypto derivatives offerings, Coinbase runs its own international perps platform, and Coinbase Derivatives has pushed for retail access to margined products. If Payward’s model works, the line between a decentralized exchange and a registered market blurs further, which is precisely the direction the CLARITY Act debate was heading before the Senate failed to advance the bill this week.
The regulatory backdrop
The timing is pointed. The Senate’s failure to advance the CLARITY Act on Tuesday was a major blow to the industry’s market structure hopes, effectively ending legislative work in the chamber for 2026. In the absence of new law, agencies and companies are improvising. The House Ways and Means Committee advanced a crypto tax bill on Wednesday, the Digital Asset Tax Certainty Act, which would ease tax burdens on everyday crypto use, showing one chamber is still moving even as industry figures noted the irony of Trump-era industry ties drawing pushback on the bill. The market structure question, though, remains open.
CFTC leadership has encouraged exactly this kind of experiment, arguing that registered exchanges can adopt decentralized technology within existing rules rather than waiting for Congress. Both acting and confirmed leadership have signaled openness to tokenized collateral and onchain execution under supervision. Payward’s announcement reads like a company testing that invitation before anyone else does, and the institutional onboarding seen in the UK, where Hargreaves Lansdown opened crypto ETNs to two million clients this month, suggests retail appetite exists wherever regulated access opens.
Risks and open questions
The model is not without friction. Hyperliquid’s protocol governance, validator set and listing process are controlled by its own community, not by a US exchange’s compliance department. If the protocol lists a token that a US regulator considers an unregistered security, or suffers an outage or exploit, the registered wrapper does not automatically protect Payward or its customers. The exchange will need clear answers on who bears responsibility for what happens onchain.
Customer protection mechanics are also unresolved in public reporting. Margin requirements, liquidation procedures, dispute resolution and fund segregation all work differently onchain than in a traditional futures clearinghouse. Bitnomial’s existing clearing arrangements will have to map onto a protocol that settles in seconds, not days. Past incidents on decentralized venues, including oracle manipulation and cascading liquidations, show the failure modes are real and not theoretical.
There is also a competitive question. Coinbase, which runs both a registered derivatives exchange and an offshore perps platform, could copy the model with its own onchain infrastructure. CME could partner with a protocol the same way. The advantage Payward holds is that it moved first and already owns the registration, which in derivatives is the scarcest asset. Execution speed and regulatory goodwill are the rest of the moat, and neither is guaranteed to last.
Still, the direction of travel is clear. US traders generate enormous perps volume offshore today, and every exchange with US registrations is looking for a way to capture it legally. Payward moved first with a $550 million acquisition and a protocol partnership. Whether the CFTC blesses the structure or forces a redesign will shape how the rest of the industry follows, and how quickly offshore volume migrates back onshore. The company has not given a launch date for the Hyperliquid-powered markets.